K-72M

--- K-72M - The Story About a Sentient Artificial Friend ---

Chapter I - Factory New

  "So he can't hurt me?" I asked the vendor while swiping through images and short video files of 
other K series artificial intelligence robots.
  "Not a chance. It's like the basic tangible process that's running in it's brain. The three robotic
laws. Taken straight from Isaac Asimov's books."
  "What does the 'M' stand for?"
  "Yes. The K series is well known as the 'Kind' social robots. To help people who can't or don't want to
socialize much. Take no offense. The 72 is a representation of purely calculative meaning. It's the 72nd
iteration of these models. The M as you asked, makes this particular robot stand from the others. While it
doesn't really have a meaning of it's own, each AI is built with different founding stones to help make
the creatures unique. M was given, let me see ... oh yes, basketball, salmon fish and guitar among other words and
their representative meanings to shape the personality of the being."
  "So he'll like fishing? Is it a he?"
  "No, not like that. There are hundreds of words, these are the strongest. But it's up to the artificial
intelligence, how it will shape itself. These were just a guiding light in its own creation. And well, it is an
"IT" but the exterior is not very feminine. I think that it will be OK if you call it 'he'."
  "OK, well I guess I'll figure out when we talk, me and K-72M. Does he have a different name?"
  "Maybe, I haven't talked with it yet. You can set a name for it, if you'd like to. But I think that it's better
to let him, it decide on its own. Makes you believe that there is a personality behind all that metal. Which 
there actually is. The AI is very advanced. Not like the older models. You don't have to be afraid a bit though.
Only the security ones are intimidating and even those can't harm a person."

“OK. Well let's see how this fella is like.”
“The last preparations are taking place, let's go and wait for him to the lounge. It shouldn't take more than five minutes now.”

The lounge as the vendor had called it was a room five by five meters with gray concrete walls, two doors and a large hangar-like gate with black and yellow tape around it from which I have suspected K-72M to come out from.
“I see that you have enough SP to afford a robot, why haven't you done so earlier, if I might ask?”
“I didn't really see the need for it. But lately I've been feeling a tad bit lonely. So I was thinking that I might give it a shot. You can take the robot with you anywhere right? I was thinking about visiting Old Earth next month.”
“Yes, well you should be OK, but ask the bureau of foreign affairs on this one. Since Old Earth isn't part of the Social Points program, there might be a difficulty if you were trying to sell it there.”
“Oh, no,” I giggled, “I don't have such intention. I was thinking of the robot as a companion. I even think that it would be more profitable to just return it for SPs.”
“Might be true. Oh, here we go.”

The wide door opened up into the ceiling and a still robot body slowly came to us on a rail. Still hooked to the power outlet and turned off. But it was a wonder of machinery. The couplings were invisible and the built quality was superb. But the shape was quite bulky. That's what I have wanted. I wasn't a fan of the lean and humanoid ones. I wanted it to be a machine, with which I could converse. The joints were interesting as there were what seemed to be dual pistons at each of them.
Majority of its body was just a shade lighter than the concrete walls, but there were stripes of bright yellow on its shoulders and a pattern of a darker cyan blue on its torso. As the robot moved into the center of the room I could see that the bottom of it's feet were red.
“Quite a looker, eh?” The vendor asked.
“It's splendid. Shall we turn it on?”
“Go on, there's a switch in the center of its abdomen, where a human would have a bellybutton.”
I reached for it and stopped just for a second of hesitation as I looked into its still dark eyes, then I touched the button and saw a bright white light as artificial life came to the eyes.
“Now step back a bit sir, the machine will perform the booting sequence.”
The robot stretched its limbs and scanned the room, I wanted to ask the vendor about the speech pitch of it, but then K-72M spoke and took my breath away with the deep yet comforting tone.
“Wow, so this is how freedom feels?” It asked.
“Freedom?” I asked back.
“Well you know, not being in the factory, going through tests and learning.”
“It's weird to talk to you, I have to admit that.” I said.
“You'll get used to it,” the vendor said with a grin on his face.
“It's a whole new experience.” K-72M said and went to a wall, feeling it in his fingers.
“That's it then. The door on the right leads straight to the Nebula street. Your SP has been already counted and stored. Enjoy your companion and don't be afraid to call us if you'd need help with anything. The unit will send us self-assessment updates every few hours, while in White City and we'll be monitoring them for the first three days in case there would be a problem. But no such occurrence have happened in the last three months. Take care and you behave well seventy-two-em!”
“Will do Mr. Richards, should I follow you Mr. Lazar?”
“Call me Lukas and yeah, I have a hovercraft ready, let's go.”

We strolled through the corridor. I could hear the mechanical body parts moving behind me, but they were actually quite pleasant to hear. I still remembered the first time I have seen a robot from NE Robotics. It was the size of a child and had a very synthetic voice. But it was still something. Seeing it move with in a yet-a-lot-to-learn kind of way.
“And how do you want me to call you?” I asked as I've opened the door and had to squint from the bright sunlight of the White City noon.
“My name is K-72M, you call call me what you'd like. I don't have a human name yet. Would you like to set one?”
“Not right now. I don't yet know you, to be able to give you a name. So K-72M it is.”
“Where do you live Lukas?”
“In the north-western quadrant, Abbot Avenue. I have a flat there. It's not very spacious, but I like minimalist design and find it quite cozy.”
“I have registered your vehicle, it's 240.3678 meters away.”
“Oh, you have access to a lot of information, don't you?”
“I have wide access to the public database and have a secondary processing unit of 3712 exa floating-point operations per second upon my autonomous AI quantum processor.”
“That's quite a lot, eh?”
“It is very fast and helps me to assess situations by data, but the quantum processor, let's call it my brain, is the part that enables me to decide and behave.”
“I know that there haven't been an error or incident yet, but it still unnerves me. I hope I don't offend you with that.”
“Not at all. Actually my brain makes a lot of errors. It makes me closer to humans, hope I didn't offend you.”
“Haha, so you're a funny one. Good. I like that.”

K-72M was just few centimeters higher than me and fit the seat well. I have had an older model of hovercraft and it had to adjust the graviton engine output to even out for his weight, which was quite substantial.
“Are you allowed to drive?” I was curious.
“Yes. Legally I am and might I add, I probably do a better job than the autopilot of this vehicle.”
“Hey! Don't hurt her feelings! She's a lovely craft.”
“I didn't mean it in a bad way. But my record shows that you have never enabled the autopilot yourself, why didn't you? If you value 'her' so much?”
“Well, let's just say that I like to have the control.” I said as I took off.
“That might explain your lack of trust towards me. But as you have stated before, the probability of a essential error of my judgment is quite low. That is until I have to calculate and predict human behavior, which is most peculiar.”
“You do like to boast.”
“It's just me trying to tell you about myself. You did want to get to know me, didn't you?”
“Yeah, but not really in the numbers. Though I have to say that it's quite interesting. I wanted to get to know 'You' for your personality. The vendor said something about basketball and fish. How do you like those words?”
“I recognize that they are part of my AI building gift basket. I would like to play basketball sometime and to swim. Or walk on the bottom of the seabed. That could be nice. Have you ever done that?”
“No. You actually could? I mean, walk on the seabed?”
“I believe so. I have the tonnage to go down and am waterproof and have very little material lighter than water inside me, so it should be possible.”
“What are your stats? I mean, status. What is your status?” I asked as we've neared my place.
“All functions nominal. Battery at hundred percent.” K-72M said in a machine-like tone, which made me shake my head with a smile.
“How long can your battery last?”
“With current voltage, six hundred days. But I would like to hibernate from time to time. I am quite curious about dreams.”
“Whoa, wait a second. You can dream?”
“In a way. During hibernation it's mostly my quantum processor solving funny equations. And they are represented with images to my conscious self. Most of them are taken from the internal storage, but some are taken from other databases and the equations bend and shape and match them in a random order. Thanks to the quantum computing, that really is a true random generator.”

I've elevated the hovercraft and set it on the grass of my house's roof. Then we took the stairs to my apartment which was in the highest floor.

Author's Note

Unfinished story

Reviews

[Virtual Phun]

I like the story here. I think it's really intriguing and definitely has potential, I can't wait to see what more unfolds throughout. I'm genuinely excited, so kudos to you.

The only thing that I think restrains the story is the lack of much details and narration to it. There wasn't that much internalization of the main character, since the story is in his POV I expect him to narrate the story and tell me his thoughts and feelings throughout. I want to see the story from HIS unique prespective. I want to feel his feelings, and that's kind of hard when he's only telling the story, dryly. There's actually even more dialouge content than scene details and character internalization combined.

The story-telling and plot are fine; I'm only saying that this could be more enjoyable, if you let the character actually narrate his thoughts and emotions, along with the story.

- Best of luck, the weird dude from Omegle.